SILENCE

LAMB

Lamb in the seething heart

Of the nervy flock

Butted and nuzzled

Reddle-daub rainbows

On weather-damp wool

Circling soft

There the wall fallen

Opens on precipice

Bleats and barging

Lamb nudges hocks,

Tough mutton and tender

Hogget and mouflon

Upward she draws them

Stompers and sleepwalkers

Sheep of this pasture

Up the rock stairway

Of sunlight and silence

The lamb, she leads

GYROVAGUE

Fear lurks at my gate like a gyrovague,

Its begging bowl clogged with failure's bones,

Lisping its warning never to change,

Unstable as night mist's shifting tones.

It cries for alms in the dead of day,

It tolls the hours with cowled skull bowed,

Its habit frayed where the shame shows through,

Mulls over misstep and untrod road.

If I turn the key, it will knock and knock,

So I lend it a seat in my circle of bliss;

Having seen it hollow, I now sleep safe,

In the stillness of light where no dread is.

MISTER STARLING

Mister Starling soon bores

Of gasps and applause

From the rapt and ecstatic

At his feats aerobatic

So he has a few sessions

Of skits and impressions

Pretending to be

With a whistle or three

Other things he has heard,

Klaxon, car horn, Blackbird,

Mobile phone on vibrate

To impress his new mate.

In motley he dresses

Punky bad-hair-day tresses,

Sturnus vulgaris ought

Be called vulgar for short,

But without each wild antic,

Balletic and frantic

Roof and garden no doubt

Would be poorer without.

UNSUNG

I didn't rise for Matins

In anything but heart

Leaden limbs under the duvet

Tracing the restless

Leaf-lace on the nets

In bruise-bright ambulance blues

Hurtling through the oven of night

Pale ceiling fanned with someone

Else's tragedy

I held their panic up against

The small hours' looming

Wideness

Listening past the siren

Past the unsprung dawn

For unsung mystery and mercy

TELLING THE TEACHER

Standing by the nature table in your classroom,

Ruckled landscapes of gingham,

Jars of startled lemon trumpets,

Scent of binka and little accidents,

("Who's made a naughty smell?")

Squeak and slough of wax crayon,

Conkers in autumn

Pussy willow in spring.

Stroking fragility,

Sniffing the furry,

Twirling my tongue

One snowy playtime

To taste the fluster and fizz

Falling from forever.

That fossil hiding in the wall,

Ripples of secret aeons

Between the Infants' and Juniors'!

 Coaxed by your compendium of buds and birthing

My eyes, my heart stretched to take it all in,

The wonder of this world,

In music and motion.

We'd made it to the Moon,

Lived a whole decade in our skins

Made collages of how we might dress

In that thing called future,

Rubber-glueing chain mail of foil and button

On sugar paper, chubby fingers

Skipping in glitter,

Imagining.

We could never have dreamed,

We babes of the boom,

Your weekday words 

Whispering down all our tomorrows,

Rhythmic reminders

You are still somehow

Incurved nurture round our eggshell childhoods,

Tender to tease us out of ourselves,

Believing in us

Till we could

Believe in ourselves.

WHAT NOW?

Bell glows

Now. Now and now.

No emphasis or urgency.

Only the rift sliced through

The tolling

By the frisking wind.

What now?

This now,

Between breath

And silence.

Moss-lipped wince of boughs

Present beneath

This butterscotch light

Purring with sunfall.

WINGS FROM SILENCE

Leucistic Blackbird scuttleflusters 

Slantwise into hidey hedge

Wondering unhumble at its own

Soul-sweet difference

Sevenly splendid Ladybird

Beacons its unhidden

Abacus wings from silence

As suddenly as Spring

Both are beauty

Glory enfolds them both